After the solo rampage of rolling and tumbling until hitting the wall, Mio — a tiny black dust speck dotting his little muzzle — fell into thought, carefully licking his gray front paws clean.
Should I just bite him and make a run for it. What if he actually takes me to the vet.
Something felt off. He couldn’t push open the glass door with this body, but it was a clinic, so patients would start coming in once operating hours began — he could wait by the door and bolt the moment it opened. The problem was what came after.
Mio didn’t know where this was, and he didn’t know the way home. He’d snuck onto a truck to get here, so walking home was out of the question. Knowing the address didn’t mean he could get there. Asking the stray cats for directions might give him some way forward, but the thought alone was daunting.
How do I get home……
Running away really was a reckless thing only someone naive could do. While Mio was blaming himself, the man was being interrogated by the green-clothed Kim Seunghyeon.
“How did you end up unreachable. What were you doing. Don’t tell me you were messing around with a cat and ended up like this.”
“As if. I inhaled sleeping gas and passed out.”
“I thought you were the type to be fine even after breathing in sleeping gas.”
Seunghyeon said, stopping his spinning chair. The tail end of his words was laced with mockery.
“Sorry, but I’m an intelligence officer, not a soldier. Is my team leader not enough — do you have to treat me like a special forces operative too?”
“That’s true. Senior, you said it was an easy mission yesterday and left me behind too — so why did you end up this injured?”
Cheoryong, who had pushed over a tray holding gauze, bandages, and antiseptic, held out the gauze to Cheongmyeong and asked.
“Thought it was going to be easy, but it wasn’t. The target suddenly vanished and ten to fifteen people showed up — I got surrounded in the alley.”
“Don’t tell me you took them all on alone?”
“I told you. Inhaled gas and passed out.”
Cheongmyeong, who said it like he was talking about someone else’s business, abruptly lifted his white T-shirt. Before any admiration for the sculpted abs set against his fair skin could arise, the first thought was that the wounds carved across his stomach and sides were something else entirely. Given the blackened dried blood and the already-split wounds, it was almost impossible to believe he had been holding a conversation this calmly up until now.
“You said you weren’t hurt?”
“Getting stabbed a little — what’s the big deal. Just slap some medicine on it, stitch it up, and it’s done.”
“Even so……”
Behind the man who answered with indifference, Cheoryong groaned “Ugh” in continuation. Making a face like he was the one in more pain, he carefully reached out and wiped away the dried blood with gauze lifted by tweezers.
The moment the alcohol touched the wound, Cheongmyeong’s jaw muscles — which had been so still — clenched tight, and the corners of his eyes narrowed faintly. He had played it off as nothing serious, but he was still a person who felt pain. Watching him in pain made Mio feel guilty about pressing on his side the night before for no good reason. Mio quietly pulled his paws together, looking deflated.
I’m sorry……
If I’d known he was hurt this badly, I wouldn’t have hit him. Even the memory of punching his cheeks and jaw in the name of waking him up came back to him. Was I too hasty.
“Still, what I can do and what a doctor can do are different.”
“You’re a nurse too.”
“By that logic, senior, you went to medical school too.”
“I barely scraped through graduation, so I don’t know much. My medical license is basically fake anyway. I’m a back-alley doctor. But hey — meow. Why do you look like that. Are you worried because daddy’s in pain?”
“Mya.”
The half-hearted reply deepened the smile in Cheongmyeong’s eyes. Looking at the gently narrowed eye corners and long lashes, Mio found himself somehow thinking of the slender petals of irises blooming beyond his room window. Despite his strange personality, Cheongmyeong had remarkably pretty eyes. His pupils weren’t particularly large, but his eye line was long and striking — and when he smiled, it seemed like the scent of a fresh spring breeze might drift out.
Just what was this man’s true identity. He had a strong premonition that he should have escaped from that alley by any means necessary. Had he been foolishly bewitched by an alpha’s face…… A strange name surfaced to Mio, lost in thought.
“May.”
The man, who had by now had all the bloodstains and wounds across his back disinfected, changed into a new shirt and said it again.
“May.”
May? It seemed he’d already gone and named him too. Unbelievable. Mio had spent twenty years living like a frog at the bottom of a well — but he was still the youngest, late-born son of Chaeyang, one of the top ten major corporations in South Korea.
He had been abandoned by his father, but had been raised showered in nothing but love by his two brothers…… Which meant he was not someone fit to be the pet of a man who had been collapsed asleep on the side of the road.
“We met in May, so your name is May. How is it. Good name, right?”
“Not bad.”
“I wasn’t asking you — I was asking our May.”
“How would a cat answer.”
Kim Seunghyeon answered on his behalf. Cheongmyeong scrunched the outer corners of his long eyes and rose from his seat, brushing off his pants and shirt.
“Our May does. I need to stop by the NIS and then get some sleep. Cheoryong, once this bastard leaves, spray some antiseptic on my seat. Why’s he sitting in the director’s chair.”
The man who said that without a care in the world came closer. The thin white shirt was draped over broad shoulder muscles and a firm chest. Mio, who had absent-mindedly raised his front paws to start kneading, lost focus for just that brief moment and got caught again. A split second too late, No! rang out in his head — but his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted with so little strength left, and he was already scooped up unceremoniously in Yu Cheongmyeong’s hand.
“Let’s go.”
I got caught like an idiot again! Just as Mio was lamenting his own foolishness, the man draped his jacket over his arm, held the cat as lightly as a bread bag, and left the clinic.
The plan had clearly been to just see the neon signs and go straight home — but maybe the mistake had been coveting a spot on a handsome man’s stomach. Mio was being held captive by a man of unknown identity with beautiful eyes when he smiled, and was heading somewhere increasingly strange. From the long road paved with smooth asphalt, the car took a sharp curve and headed down a road nestled among gentle rolling mountains.
With no cat carrier or car seat, Mio made do sitting on top of Cheongmyeong’s jacket. Every time the car rounded a curve, gravity pushed his little body sliding toward the corner of the passenger seat. Cheongmyeong, who had been watching the road ahead, turned his head and fished the squished Mio out from where he’d wedged into the seat and put him back in place.
Rubbing his eyelids, Mio took in the view across from him — a spread of large white buildings, almost strangely grand in scale. On both sides of the road, hills covered in straight-standing trees flanked them like they were trying to block everyone’s line of sight.
The entire time the car drove toward the buildings, motorcycles ridden by police officers filed in and out in the adjacent lane, and yellow barricades preventing civilian access were installed at various points around the road.
Mio blinked at the sign mounted on a yellow barricade that read [No Photography / Dashcam Blocked]. There wasn’t a single signboard anywhere indicating what the buildings were for, but it was plainly felt that this was no ordinary place.
When a guard standing rigidly in sunglasses came into view shortly after, Mio was seized with an inexplicable unease. He couldn’t hold back the pounding of his heart, and in the end buried his head inside Cheongmyeong’s clothes and just lay there breathing in low, rumbling purrs.
The vehicle entered through the gate at a very slow speed, and a staff member from the entrance came out and stopped the car. In front of the guardhouse, a small national flag hung fluttering in the breeze.
“Your ID, please. Have you switched off your dashcam?”
“You must have my face memorized by now.”
“Ha ha, they told us to check registered vehicles too, just for the past few days.”
Cheongmyeong gave a small nod and handed over his ID. After a brief check, the signal to proceed was given. Mio’s entire body was trembling just from being inside, as if he might get arrested for merely peeking around — yet the man looked as natural as if this were something he did every day.
Still though…… No matter how he looked at it, this was no ordinary place. It didn’t look like a hospital either.
If I transform into a human here, I’ll end up as a lab experiment on the spot……
There was a reason Mio felt uneasy. Not only was he frightened of his strange nature — shifting between cat and human — being discovered, but the sight of the white walls of the building had involuntarily flashed a painful memory through his mind for the first time: the memory of being injected with needles in a laboratory.
“May, why are you trembling?”
It seemed his body had been shaking without him realizing. Mio let the tension out of his curled, rigid body. Cheongmyeong’s hand quietly stroked beneath Mio’s chin, then slowly rubbed along the small rising and falling of his back.
“You were startled because it’s your first time here, weren’t you. Our May.”
It wasn’t the unfamiliarity of the place that was the problem — but the warmth of his touch eased the feeling a little. While Mio was forcibly clearing his mind by licking the top of his paw, Cheongmyeong kept gently warming Mio’s small body in his palm.
It had only been a short time, but the man was being remarkably affectionate toward Mio — almost excessively so. Does he really intend to make me a house cat. He was sorry to Cheongmyeong, but Mio couldn’t be his cat.
Once he confirmed the trembling had subsided, Cheongmyeong readjusted his hold on Mio and headed toward the elevator at the end of the corridor. Mio’s eyes went wide. Two gleaming, massive metal doors. He had only ever seen an elevator in books — this was his first time seeing one in real life.
Stepping inside, just as described in those books, there was a row of number buttons in the right-hand corner. Cheongmyeong’s hand moved toward it — but he wasn’t pressing a floor button. He held a card up to the reader below, and a small screen mounted above the floor buttons began displaying his face. It was like magic.
“Oh.”
Cheongmyeong, who had been staring blankly at his own face on the screen, suddenly reached his hand up high just as the elevator indicated it was heading to the unlisted floor F and the screen was about to go dark.
“Myaang.”
With Mio’s cry, a chubby-cheeked cat appeared on the low-resolution screen.
“Cuter when you’re seen small.”
The screen went off quickly. He drew Mio into his arms as if the moment had been stolen from him, and prodded the little round protruding belly with his index finger. The elevator was descending with a low wuung — a vibration that resonated in the ears and body. The deeper underground it went, the cooler the air felt even beneath his fur. Cradled in the man’s arms and blinking blankly, Mio had a simple question.
Is it okay to bring a cat into a place like this? Something’s off. Thinking practically, he turned his head absentmindedly — and caught sight of words written on the wall.
Boundless loyalty and devotion for the nation and its people. National Intelligence Service.
